OK, so it’s more linear than Zero Mission. In a way, that’s actually a good thing. I did spend a fair amount of Zero wondering where the hell I was supposed to go next, so actually being told this time around is a good thing. Probably. I’ve done the bit at the beginning, and found and fixed the five atmospheric controller thingies, and then got into Area 2. I have the Charge Beam, Morph Ball and Power Bomb so far, …
MOST ANNOYING BIT EVAAR. It seems there’s a flying school mission at the airstrip I’ve just bought, so I went and finished that. It took AGES as it’s too hard. The plane controls are too twitchy, and when flying the helicopter the camera swings round to suit itself but not you, meaning you can’t see where you’re going, or what you’re shooting at. Stupid. Anyway, that done, it was off to Las Venturas properly, to do some more missions for …
Gettin’ on, mofo! Or something. About four missions later (one of which involved blowing up a helicopter with a rocket launcher, and another involved killing [spoiler]), and I’m off to sunny Las Venturas across the sea. There I met a mysterious man, who wants me to ride a Monster Truck all over the hills, for no reason. I oblige, only to mess it up as I couldn’t scale a mountain quick enough. Managed it on my second attempt though. And …
Made my way up the mountain again, realising I’d missed some obvious blow-open-walls bits (and hence why I was stuck). At the top, I found a Minish Mine, where a blacksmith took the broken Picori Blade and send me off to get the Fire Element from another nearby mine. Naturally, this was another dungeon. The mid-boss was a load of grey spiky wobbly things, and the weapon in this dungeon was the Cane of Pacci. How unfortunate. It flips things …
Went off to my first “dungeon”, to get the Earth Element. For some reason, it looks like three purple drops of water, so that doesn’t make sense. Anyway, the dungeon was the usual Zelda dungeoning affair, with Small Keys and chests and switches and a map and a compass and stuff. Killed the “mid-boss” and got a Gust Jar – a new weapon for Zelda games. It sucks stuff up. Nice. Finished off the main boss too, and went back …
Whew! A bit of a marathon session on this today. I really want to complete it soon; not because it isn’t any good, far from it, but because I have stacks of other games to play and I’m trying not to have too many “on the go” at once. I got the “turn into a boat” ability, as suspected, and then went off and defeated Cortez at the end of the Pirate’s cave. He was actually pretty hard, with his …
But it’s not over yet! I finished the cave with the nasty thing on rollers, which was much easier in the end than it seemed. Got a few treasures in there, but not many. I then went back to one of the first caves I’d done, but not got everything in – Hole of Beasts – and completed it. The amount of treasure I got from there was enough to finish the game! However, after that, you can carry on …